The Slam

How does the slam work?

The poets that compete at Brave New Voices are champions from each participating city, as determined through a local competitive process. At BNV, we start with Quarterfinals, consisting of 4-5 teams, each with a minimum of 4 competing poets.

Each slam has 4 rounds, and each team participates in 2 Quarterfinals. A calibration poet will perform before the first round of each bout and the order in which the poets perform shifts in each of the four rounds. 20 teams from the Quarterfinals advance to the Semifinals. All Semifinal bouts will consist of 5 teams. The winning team of each Semifinal moves on to be 1 of the 4 teams advancing to Grand Slam Finals. There will only be 4 teams in the Finals, so there are tiebreakers in the Semifinensure insure only one winning team emerges from each bout. This year, Quarterfinal bouts and Semifinal bouts happen across two days for a total of 25 poetry slams. Every participant will get a chance to perform and listen to a lot of poetry.

The 2018 Brave New Voices Festival is powered by Youth Speaks, and is made possible through the generous support of an Anonymous Advisor, the Hellman Foundation, the James Irvine Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, Panta Rhea Foundation, PLUS1/Broken Social Scene, the California Endowment, Zappos, and through the generosity of individuals who believe that the voices of young people matter.